The Wine-Dark Sea

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Oh, very well, very well. You may be as satirical as you please; but I think we have come out of it most uncommon well. I for one never supposed that tonight we could turn in and sleep in peace.'

  In peace they slept, profound peace, the peace of physically exhausted but easy-minded and very well fed men, at least until the graveyard watch. On the moonlit deck Wilkins, on being relieved by Grainger at eight bells, said, 'Here you have her: reefed courses, foretopsail atrip; course north-east by north; Captain's orders in the binnacle drawer.' Then, in a conversational tone, 'You may have something of a ducking in an hour or so.'

  'Yes,' said Grainger, also looking into the north-east, where low dark clouds quite hid the sky, 'I dare say we shall. A drop of rain and this precious cold will wake me up. Dear Lord, how fast asleep I was, and warm!'

  'I shall be the same in two minutes. It was a right hard day and night.' He paused with one foot on the ladder and said, 'Surely it is uncommon to see lightning in these latitudes?'

  'Oh, I have known it often enough,' said Grainger. 'Not so often as between the tropics, but pretty often. Only down here you don't linger on deck, so perhaps it seems much rarer.'

  Four bells, and it began to snow: the Surprise was keeping to her sober five knots.

  Six bells, and the wind strengthened, growing so changeable that once the ship was almost taken aback. Grainger close-reefed the foretopsail, and almost immediately afterwards the sky was covered entirely - no moon, no stars - and without a warning a violent rain, mixed with sleet, came hurtling down, so violent and so continued, with water jetting wide from the leeward scuppers and the watch huddled under the break of the quarterdeck, that it was impossible to strike seven bells.

  Yet half-past three in the morning it was; Stephen's watch said so, and as it was telling the hour so Stephen, for the second time in his life and in the same ship, was woken by an enormous noise or combination of noises that he instantly recognized. The frigate had surely been struck by lightning.

  She had indeed. Her mainmast was utterly shattered, its fragments flung into the sea: its yards, however, lay athwartships, and like the foremast they were quite untouched. The ship had at once put before the wind, whatever the helmsmen might do; but as the snow and rain had calmed the sea she was reasonably steady, though unmanageable, and Stephen was soon called down to the sick-berth.

  There were only three casualties: one man, a Knipperdolling named Isaac Rame, apparently uninjured apart from a black mark the size of a shilling over his heart, but completely, profoundly insensible - listening to its completely disordered beat Stephen shook his head - and two other foremast hands strangely burnt. These burns, though superficial, caused much distress; they were extensive, branching all over the men's backs in a close-set network of divergent lines, and it took Stephen, Padeen and Fabien so long to dress them that a pale daylight was showing upon the table when Stephen came into the cabin for breakfast.

  'Well, here's a pretty go,' cried Jack. 'Here's a pretty mess. Have a cup of coffee,' - pouring it. He sounded quite cheerful, as though the loss of the ship's mainmast were of slight importance; and so it was, compared with what followed. 'When we have finished breakfast - pray help yourself to bacon and pass the dish - I will show you something more extraordinary by far. Our rudder has gone by the board.'

  'Oh, oh,' cried Stephen, aghast. 'Are we rudderless, so?'

  'I will not deceive you, brother: we are without a rudder. Do you remember asking me about pintles?' Stephen nodded, still much concerned. 'Well, it appears that at some point in our dreadful passage through the drift-ice a great floe must have lifted the pintles off the dumb-chalder and the braces, or most of them, and destroyed the wood-locks, so that it was hanging by little more than the tiller. We did not notice it, since we barely touched the helm sailing large; but when the lightning struck the rudder-head, shattering all down to the water-line, why, it dropped clean away.' He pointed to the shattered, blackened rudder-head, now covered by a decent cloth.

  'Is there any help for such a state of affairs?'

  'Oh, I am sure we shall find something,' said Jack. 'May I trouble you for the marmalade? Capital marmalade, you must confess; though not quite as good as Sophie's.'

  Stephen had often heard Jack say, when life at sea grew more trying than the human frame could bear, 'that it was no use whining'; but he had never seen quite this degree of insouciance, or what he felt tempted to call irresponsible levity. How much was assumed as a captain's duty in a virtually hopeless situation? How much was Jack's natural reaction? He was not a man much given to strike attitudes. How hopeless was the situation in fact? Stephen might still confuse braces and pintles, dumb-chalders and sling-dogs, but he knew enough about the sea to feel that a ship far and far from land with only one mast and no rudder at all was in a very sad way: furthermore his knowledge of sailing, though limited, did tell him that one mast and its sails in the very front of the ship could impel a rudderless vessel only directly before the wind, that the wind in these latitudes was nearly always westerly, and that there was no land ahead until they came right round the globe to Cape Horn again.

  He did not like to ask directly, but he put these points to various shipmates; to his distress they all, invariably, agreed with him. 'Ah, Doctor, things is wery bad,' said Joe Plaice. 'I have never heard anything so dreadful as the loss of a rudder five thousand miles from land,' said Mr Adams, 'for in our condition, South America, dead to windward, cannot be considered as land at all.' Yet at the same time he detected much of this same cheerfulness throughout the ship and something not very far from apparent unconcern, even in so atrabilious a soul as Killick. 'Have I been plying the ocean with a parcel of Stoics all this time?' he wondered. 'Or in my ignorance am I myself somewhat over-timid?'

  But then again in his frequent encounters with the foremast jacks - and his relations with them were of quite a different nature and in some ways much closer than those of any other officer - he had occasional insights that showed an entirely different aspect of the situation: of the moral situation at all events. The lower deck knew perfectly well that Vidal and his closest Knipperdolling connexions had smuggled Dutourd ashore; and they had become convinced that once ashore Dutourd had in some way informed upon the Doctor, putting his life in danger. And it was as though this treachery had brought bad luck on the Surprise, however kindly Vidal had meant his action in the first place. Bad luck was a term that embraced a greal deal: other people might have spoken of a curse, a spell, or a divine resentment of impiety. But whatever it was called they had missed the China ships, and they had been near as a toucher sunk by the Americans, by the ice-islands and by the ice-floes. And now the barky had been struck by lightning. But it was a Knipperdolling that had copped it, and once he went over the side the bad luck would be off the ship.

  He went the second day after the stroke. His shipmates attended with real concern - they had nothing against Isaac Rame himself, nothing whatsoever - but when the high south-western swell closed over him without a splash on Tuesday morning they went back to their work with a particular satisfaction, one that informed their entire attitude.

  ** *

  This satisfaction continued throughout the week, or rather more. Stephen, who was often, almost invariably, in the way on deck when complex work was being carried out, wrote a commentary on it for Diana: Mariners: Consensus and Cohesion in certain States of Adversity, together with Some Remarks on Peruvian Cirripedes for the Royal Society.

  For the most part the weather was kind, the wind, though often boisterous, steady in the west; and although they had frequent rain and two blinding snow-storms there was no ice about and the temperature was nearly always above freezing by day. They were still without a rudder, but until one could be fashioned and above all hung, they had a steering oar over the quarter that allowed a point or two of northerly deviation from their steady eastward course. By the end of this time three sad little poles rose from where the stately masts had been: the foremast, standing
stark alone; its topmast and topgallant, both worked into the launch's mast, stood for the shattered main; and an even stranger assembly took the place of the mizen, spreading a pitiful fore-and-aft sail the size of the cabin tablecloth: yet it did give a certain balance. From the main and the fore yards hung broad but extraordinarily shallow square sails, so low that when Stephen was led on deck to see them he asked where they were intended to be hoisted. 'They are hoisted,' he was told, in a voice of strong displeasure. Forward still, and there was the unhurt bowsprit, carrying its spritsail and spritsail topsail; and, since the ship was very well found in bosun's and sailmaker's stores, she wore all the staysails that could possibly be managed. 'It is just like Bridie Colman's washing day, I do declare,' cried Stephen, in another unfortunate attempt to please. 'Everything is within an easy hand's reach, so it is.'

  'This is an extraordinarily small piece of plum-duff,' he observed at dinner - Sunday dinner - in the cabin. 'I wish it may not be an ignoble stroke of revenge for my innocent words this morning about our harmless, meek, and bargelike appearance -innocent upon my word, and even, I thought, amusing - a mild pleasantry. But not at all: prim faces, wry looks, and now this meagre, despicable pudding. I had thought better of my shipmates.'

  'You mistake, brother,' said Jack. 'Mr Adams and I, in our joint character as purser, cast our accounts yesterday, reckoning every last firkin of oatmeal, every bin and locker in the bread-room, and dividing the whole, private stores not excepted, by the number of mouths aboard. That piece of pudding is your full ration, my poor Stephen.'

  'Oh, indeed,' said Stephen, looking rather blank.

  'Yes. I have told the ship's company of this, and I have told them that unless or until we can fashion and ship a rudder..."

  'If you spend another two minutes up to your neck in water at this temperature, striving to do so, I will not answer for your life,' said Stephen. 'Last time it was nip and tuck, with hot blanket, fomentations, and half a pint of my best brandy.'

  '... unless we can ship a rudder that will enable us to haul up for St Helena, I intend to bear away for the Cape, edging north all the time with our steering oar, or perhaps some better gear. It is about three thousand five hundred miles, and although we have logged over a hundred for each of these last three days with this comic rig, as you so rightly call it, and with this steady wind and beautiful eastward current, I have only reckoned on fifty, no more: one seventieth part of the distance. Fifty multiplied by seventy is three thousand five hundred, Stephen. And that succulent, luxurious pudding now in front of you is the seventieth part of all the duff that you will eat before we raise the Table Mountain.'

  'God love you, Jack, what things you tell me.'

  'Never despond, dear Stephen: remember that Bligh sailed four thousand miles in an open boat, with not a thousandth part of our stores. You will never despond, Stephen,' said Jack with a very slight emphasis. 'And I am sure you will never find any of the seamen do so, either.'

  'No,' said Stephen, stifling his recollections of the terrible following seas during the frequent storms in these latitudes, the perpetual danger of being pooped, of broaching-to, and of being lost with all hands in a turmoil of foam. 'No. I shall not despond.'

  'And Stephen, may I beg you not to be facetious when speaking of the barky? The people are surprisingly susceptible, if you know what I mean, about her appearance. And if ever you intend to be complimentary, you might well be advised just to throw up your hands and cry "Oh", or "Superb", or "I have never seen anything better", without being particular.'

  'The Doctor has been choked off for being a satyr,' said Killick to Grimble.

  'What's a satyr?'

  'What an ignorant cove you are to be sure, Art Grimble: just ignorant, is all. A satyr is a party that talks sarcastic. Choked off something cruel, he was; and his duff taken away and eaten before his eyes.'

  Although the ship was wonderfully busy the news spread forward with its usual speed, and Stephen, making his way to the forecastle to watch albatrosses and the nondescript petrel that had been following the ship for some days, was greeted with particular kindness, brought a coil of soft manilla to sit upon, given a pair of belaying-pins to hold his telescope steady, and told about the birds that had been seen that day, including a numerous band of stinkpots flying south, an infallible sign of clear weather. This was all very much in line with what he had so often known at sea, and once more the evident good-will warmed his spirit.

  He thought of it with pleasure as he went to sleep; and its absence the next day, together with a want of that cheerfulness so usual on deck, struck him with all the more force when he took the air in the forenoon after a trying, anxious time with the sick-berth, where neither burns nor foot were doing well, and with his collections, where a vile moth was breeding among the feathers and no pepper, no pepper left in the entire ship to discourage it. He arrived on deck not by climbing the companion-ladder to the quarterdeck in the usual way but by the fore-hatchway, having traversed the berth-deck to consider Dutourd's former cabin for the amputation in case his suspicion of an incipient pneumonia (that frequent sequel) should prove to be true. This brought him into the waist of the ship, filled with hands. They touched their hats and wished him good-day, but mechanically, with barely a smile, and returned to their low, anxious, intent conversations, frequently calling up in subdued voices to their companions thick along the starboard gangway.

  He pushed through to the quarterdeck; and there were the same grave faces, grey with cold and discouragement, looking fixedly to windward, that is to say a little south of the ship's modest wake. 'What is afoot?' he murmured in Reade's ear.

  'Stand over here, sir,' said Reade, guiding him to the rail, 'and look out to windward.'

  A topsail schooner sailing large: and some miles beyond her a ship, also standing north-north-east with topgallants and studdingsails abroad, a glorious sight; but one that gave no pleasure.

  'It is that brutal great American, come to snap us up,' said Reade.

  'Shame on him, after such a handsome message,' murmured Wedel.

  'Where is the Captain?'

  'Aloft, sir; but,' Reade whispered, 'he don't see very well today. Both eyes water so in the cold.'

  'It is cold, sure,' said Stephen. He focused his best newly-cleaned glass, a superlative piece made for him by Dolland with a somewhat greater magnification than was usual in the Navy, for identifying birds; and presently he said, 'Tell me, Mr Reade: frigates have but one row of guns, have they not?'

  'Yes, sir. Just one,' said Reade patiently, holding up a single finger.

  'Well, this boat, or vessel, has two; as well as some each end.'

  'Nay, sir,' said Reade, shaking his head: then urgently, 'Please may I have a look? Oh sir,' he shrieked to Pullings at the taffrail, 'she ain't the Yankee. She's a two decker. A sixty-four-gun ship -the Doctor saw her.'

  'On deck, there,' came Jack's voice from on high, cutting through the unworthy hubbub. 'She's a sixty-four-gun ship, the old Berenice, I think - yes, the old Berenice - from the New South Wales station. Bery nicey too,' he added, with a private chuckle.

  'And that, much nearer to us,' said Stephen to the ecstatic Reade, 'is what we at sea term a schooner; but you need not be afraid. She carries little in the way of guns.'

  'A Baltimore clipper, sir, I believe,' said Mr Adams.

  'Indeed? I could have sworn she was a schooner, in spite of those rectangular sails in front.'

  'Certainly, sir. She is certainly a schooner in rig. The clipper part refers to her hull.'

  'Oh, she has a hull as well, has she? I was not aware. But pray tell me, Mr Adams, do you think you could find a little small bag of pepper, just half a stone or so, in the Captain's storeroom itself?'

  'Sir, I have searched it through and through, in spite of that wicked Killick, and - see, she is rounding to.'

  The schooner checked her way and a tall young midshipman, standing on her low rail and holding a shroud, hailed, 'The ship ahoy - if ship you
can be called, poor hulk [this in an undertone] - what ship is that?"

  'His Majesty's hired vessel Surprise,' replied Tom. 'Captain Pullings.'

  All along her side the schooner's hands stood grinning, staring, making offensive gestures: the Surprises looked back with stony hatred.

  'Come aboard with your papers," said the midshipman.

  'Take that American contraption back to the Berenice,' roared Jack, half-way down the ratlines, 'and tell Captain Dundas with Captain Aubrey's compliments that he will wait upon him. D'ye hear me, there?'

  'Yes, sir,' replied the midshipman, and on either side of him the simpering stopped dead. 'Aye aye, sir: Captain Aubrey's compliments... Sir,' he called across the widening lane, 'may I say Philip Aubrey is aboard?'

  Oh the mirth aboard the Surprise. Several of the younger men leapt into the rigging, ostentatiously slapping their buttocks at the schooner as she fled away, sailing unbelievably close to the wind. But more, many more of the hands gathered in the waist or on the forecastle, oblivious of the cold, revelling in their prize-money preserved, even as it were restored, laughing, clapping one another on the back.

  The ships drew near; nearer. 'I know perfectly well what he is going to say,' murmured Jack to Stephen as they stood there in their boat-cloaks by the gangway stanchions. 'He is going to call out, "Well, Jack, whom the Lord loveth He chastizeth", and all his people will set up a silly cackle. There's Philip! Lord, how he has shot up.' Philip was Jack Aubrey's half-brother, last seen as a youngster aboard Dundas's previous command.

  The Surprise, with her frail spars, could not easily get her launch over the side, and Dundas was sending his barge for them. It was lowered down in a seamanlike manner, and as it shoved off Captain Dundas, waving his hat from the Berenice's quarterdeck, called, 'Well, Jack, whom the Lord loveth He chastizeth, ha, ha, ha! You must be a prime favourite up above. Heavens, you are in a horrid state.'

  'Captain Dundas, sir,' cried Stephen, 'Do you think you could oblige me with a few pounds of fresh black pepper?'